MiraCosta's 'Assassins' is dark, disturbing and funny

Challenge is a good word for the Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman
musical "Assassins."

Finding the right tone and presentation for the highly
controversial subject matter is a challenge for a director.
Performing Sondheim's notoriously difficult score is a challenge
for both the singers and the orchestra. And attending a musical
about nine people who assassinated, or attempted to kill, U.S.
presidents is a challenge for the audience.

So how well does MiraCosta College rise to the challenge in its
production, now playing through Sunday in Oceanside? Quite well in
most cases. Director Eric Bishop's production is both disturbing
and darkly funny, just as Sondheim and Weidman intended; the
dialogue is riveting; the look of the show is stark and vivid; the
physical similarity between the actors and the real-life assassins
is often startling; and the 17-member cast is excellent, with many
standout performances.

The only disappointment is the show's musical element.
"Assassins" is one of Sondheim's least hummable scores, and the
singers and orchestra had a hard time finding their timing, balance
and synchronization on opening night last weekend. Many lyrics were
rushed or inaudible, and the clashing of voices and instruments in
some songs made them almost unlistenable. This weekend's
performances should be considerably tighter.

"Assassins" is designed to shock. There are multiple shootings,
a suicide, a hanging and an electrocution, and the opening number
features a sideshow barker luring passers-by to buy a gun and kill
a president.

Wandering through this timeless carnival are rebel actor John
Wilkes Booth (the "pioneer" of presidential assassinations, with
his 1965 slaying of Abraham Lincoln); the self-aggrandizing lawyer
Charles Guiteau (who shot James Garfield in the back in 1881);
socialist activist Leon Czolgosz (who shot William McKinley at
point-blank range at a 1901 fair); immigrant factory worker
Giuseppe Zangara (who failed in his 1933 attempt to shoot Franklin
D. Roosevelt); unemployed tire salesman Sam Byck (who intended to
fly a hijacked jetliner into Richard Nixon's White House in 1974
but died in the attempt); Charles Manson devotee Lynette "Squeaky"
Fromme (whose gun failed to fire in a 1975 attempt on Gerald Ford's
life in Sacramento); flaky housewife-turned-political radical Sarah
Jane Moore (who missed while shooting at Ford just two weeks after
Fromme's try); and John Hinckley Jr. (whose obsession with film
star Jodie Foster led him to shoot Ronald Reagan in 1981).

The eccentricities and motivations of each would-be assassin is
examined in detail, from Guiteau's bizarre belief that he was owed
a presidential appointment, to Fromme's hope that killing Ford
would win Manson's favor; to Booth's heroic idea that he was
avenging the South; to Byck's bizarre tape recordings that America
had failed him.

While mental illness or a desperate desire for fame played a big
role in most cases, there was also the shared belief that the
American dream had not materialized for any of these killers, and
-- as the musical's signature song goes -- "Everybody Has a Right
(to their dreams)."

The musical mixes fact and fiction with a surreal sense of time
and space. The assassins skip across decades to commiserate with
each other over beers and fried chicken on their problems and
society's inability to fix them. They sing folk odes to their guns
and they dream rhapsodically of their future place in history.

The most famous presidential assassin, the seriously conflicted
Lee Harvey Oswald, is intentionally mute until the second act, when
Booth finds him on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository in
1963 and convinces him that shooting John F. Kennedy will make not
just him, but all of his fellow assassins, eternally notorious. The
gut-churning scene, accompanied by projected images from the
presidential motorcade in Dallas, is the most harrowing in the
play, and a follow-up song, "Something Just Broke," recalls the
feeling most Americans had the instant they learned about Kennedy's
shooting.

Standouts in the superb cast are the ebullient Virginia Gregg as
"Squeaky" Fromme; Juan Castaneda, who gives a manic, John
Belushi-like performance as the ranting psychopath Byck; KD
Sperling, who's unpredictable as the loopy, attention-starved Sarah
Jane Moore; and Jesse Brodie, who brings a sinister Southern charm
to the idealistic Booth.

Max Myers has a burning, laserlike intensity as Czolgosz; Gedaly
Guberek is very convincing as the Italian immigrant Zangara; and
Tom Brault brings much-needed levity as the goofy, egomaniacal
Guiteau. Ryan Johnson is boyish and brooding as Hinckley. And Kyle
Lucy somehow manages to make Oswald sympathetic. Tom Hatfield laces
the show together as the narrating Balladeer; and Allie Smith is
strong and wise as socialist organizer Emma Goldman (for whom
Czolgosz is said to have killed McKinley).

Kudos to costumer Jennifer Monroe and makeup designer Larry
Jorgensen for their uncanny re-creations of these famed assassins,
particularly the clothes and hairstyles of Booth, Hinckley, Guiteau
and Oswald.

The musical is just over 90 minutes in length, but it's wisely
split with an intermission, which is a good idea with such
difficult subject matter. The musical has very strong language and
mature themes and is not suited for small children, but its probing
examination of the American psyche is well worth a look by anyone
interested in provocative theater.

"Assassins" is not a feel-good musical, and it's not the type of
show that will have you running out to buy the unmelodic soundtrack
when you leave, but it is fascinating in its bold, crackling
examination of this reviled group of sociopaths.